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foraging nuts, preserving and recipes.

Im going to focus on hazelnuts, walnuts and sweet chestnuts as I find these to be the most useful and hope to have interesting and useful things to share.

Just quickly; some of the other nuts you can forage and use are acorns, beech and pine. Personally I think they are a lot of hard work for little results though if you have a gluten free diet it might be useful to know you could make flour from acorn or chestnuts. Acorns can be high in tanins which are bad for your kidneys, so it is usually leeched out with water.

I thought it worth mentioning here that new leaf growth in the spring from many of these trees is tasty.

You may find Beech is more useful for that rather than the teeny tiny nuts, though Im told if youre lucky enough to have a press you can make lovely oil with them . Given how I use oils this is something I would very much like to own! (If you should hear of one being thrown out remember me).

Theres is always such a huge abundance of beech masts that everyone at some point must have thought about how they can be useful

Im talking about the 3 nuts in the order you are most likely to be finding them in the year.

Hazelnuts

The trees are more shrubs, so looking in hedgerows is a good start, I go towards the end of summer and if I find any pick them and eat them right away. When you eat nuts whilst they ae fresh and green like this, they are softer, wet and sweeter (kind of sweet in the way that carrots are) You can pick them and leave them to harden and dry to be more like the ones in the shops around christmastime

This image is from The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust http://www.ywt.org.uk/species/hazel “Hazel is recognisable by its almost circular, toothed leaves which have soft hairs on the underside, its yellow catkins, shiny, brown bark, and the crop of hazel nuts that appear in late summer.”

If you’re very lucky or you have your own trees that you a re able to keep squirel free you might find some that have dropped and some that have ripened and slightly hardened.

Check them for little holes left by the weevils, the squirels know not to eat these and there wont be anything edible inside.

Doormice also like hazel nuts and I couldnt resist sharing this very cute of photo of a sleeping one from The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust Taken by Tom Chalmers

*sqeeeee!* They are one of my favourite small mammals, I delight in seeing these.

In the bottom place a few of the hazelnuts stored in local honey (you can just put shop bough ones in and drizzle them in honey)

Whip up a tablespoon of mascarpone with a good sized tablespoon of chestnut puree (recipe to follow, could add a bit of freshly squeezed orange instead or leave it plain)

(my my nails are clean that is from peeling chestnuts -it hurts might be bruised)

I then topped with granola (making granola is easy but I took photographs and will add a recipe later, google will help in the meantime)

place in the fridge whilst you make the caramel/syrup

I used 150ml of Saltiare brewery’s hazelnut coffee porter

I added around 100g of brown sugar turn up the heat to get it going and then turn down to a med/high

leave it to bubble and froth for around 5 mins

removed from the heat when its looking a bit thicker

the bubbles will die down and it should look like this

Get your gla ss(es) from the fridge, sprinkle in granola nd then drizzle over your caramel

yum!

Hazelnuts are also very good for baking with -bread too very nice with cheese 😉 I used walnut this way (coming next)

Walnuts

One of my favourite childhood trees was a big old walnut tree. I have recently been informed that they only produce nuts for 40 years -seems unlikely to me but then maybe my memory is influenced by the fact that I was much smaller then. It seems very old and I remember gathering and eating the walnuts, and there were always so many of them! It has been hard for me to find one producing the nuts abundantly, and even harder to beat the squirrels to them, nonethless I was lucky this year and managed a ‘haul’ of about 7. I think they’re likely the most difficult to forage.

These are what the leaves look like there were no nuts still on to photograph, just the peeled remnants of the squirrels feast 😦

Each leaft is devided into 7-9 ‘leaflets’ whcih might be able to see there.

The walnuts are inside a green tough skin, you can see some of the black through these, and on the peeled ones. This can be used as a natural die and ink. You might be able to see them leaking on the picture? fresh walnuts are also called wet walnuts or green walnuts. Once you crack the shell the familiar wrinkly walnut appears inside. They are much softer resh and have a much milder sweeter flavour. You can save and dry thm if you like. I nibbled on mine and baked a few in bread rolls with a traditional nettle wrapped cornish Yarg. They were delicious.

You can google a basic white bread roll recipe -I used the hairy bikers one.

If you are lucky enough to find more it would be great to have a go at making the dyes and inks. Or you might be able to get some fresh one at farmers markets. Of course thery dont have to be fresh to be useful and you can buy them to use in recipes. Apple walnut and gorgonzola are wonderful flavours in tarts and pastries. Baklava (walnut and pistachio) not just coffee and walnut cake -but why wouldnt want to make that? 🙂 and of course pastas and salads with walnuts and cheese, and walnut and basil pesto too.

*intresting fact* The Romans associated the walnut with Juno, the Roman goddess of women and marriage and the wife of Jupiter. This association led to the unique wedding practice of throwing walnuts at the bride and groom as a symbol of fertility. Women often carried walnuts to promote fertility. The botanical name Juglans is derived from Jupiter’s glans.

moving swiftly on

Sweet chestnuts

Chestnuts are one of those trees that have both male and female flowers, the female flowers become the nuts in Autumn

The ancient Greeks dedicated the sweet chestnut to Zeus and its botanical name castanea comes from Castonis, a Town in Thessaly in Greece where the tree was grown for its nuts.

I am lucky to have a patch of very well established chestnut trees producing abundant amounts each, which is within walking distance (as are all of the nuts Ive foraged this year)

I estimate I picked around 2lbs that have gone into purees/preserves, pies and have been eaten as snacks, this is a teeny tiny fraction of what falls onto the ground and rots away.

Roasting chestnuts

you can cut a cross in the flat side or a slit along the edge top to bottom, some find that easier but there is a far greater risk of slipping, thus uts harder to do whilst watching a film or something, quite tricky without a chestnut knife I found so I opted fro the cross in the flat side. You need heat and moisture to make the shells easier to work with. You can roast, boil or even wrap a handful in a damp towel and place in the microwave for a couple of minutes. I found a very hot tea towel a bit of a nuisance/pain (literally) and I prefer the flavour of roasted (which could be done after if you find them easier to peel from the microwave) If you have a lot to do it will take you longer than the oven or boiling. Theres not that much difference/if any at all in the ease of peeling with each method. Peel an eat or set aside for use (I had to put mine in the fridge overnight) soft/moist/protein, means that they could likely spoil easily. You usually use them straight away.

The membranes can be bitter if you dont peel them off it is almost as painstaking as deseeding rosehips. I left them on for the next recipe. It didn’t taste bitter.

Chestnut preserve/jam and puree

NOTE: This recipe makes 2 batches one with milk/cream for quick-ish use (milk/cream will spoil) and one with water

300-350g of chestnuts (peeled and roasted divide into 2 pans)

2 cups milk (or cream)

2 cups of water

2 cups golden sugar

x1 vanilla pod

x4 tbspn dark rum

add the milk/cream to one pan and the water to the other and a cup of soft golden sugar to both

Bring to the boil, reduce, and simmer

when the liquid has mostly absorbed and the nuts are just going crumbly on the outsides lift them out with a slotted spoon and whizz in the food processor

cut you vanilla pod in half and scrape one half into each pan and add the rum

add the liquid from the pan to the processor, til you reach your desired consistency

(you may wish to add more boiled water/milk/cream or brandy. The water needs to be boiled if you are treating this as a preserve)

TIP: if you’re making both, start with the water one then you dont have to wash everything before doing the other! (get in)

This part is optional, I pressed my puree through a seive for a couple of jars as it has such a pleasant texture

I didnt do this for all of it as its time consuming, and seemed a little wasteful. I couldnt get it all through, what didnt go through I stirred back into mixture that I wasnt going to be seiving. If you liked tou could make 3 different grades of thickness the seives the unseived and the thicker left behind -they can have different uses. I added more rum to one of mine and we dipped toasted marshmallows in it 🙂

ladle into your warm sterilied jars and label, when cool, place in the fridge.